The Union Health Ministry has proposed popularising e-portals to regulate and plug gaps in the sale of medicines in the country. This is to be achieved through all available platforms including e-pharmacies and this will also help regulate supply of medicines through internet.
“The decision will benefit the consumers with the supply of quality medicines and ensuring accountability on the part of the pharmaceutical companies. This also helps the Government to increase its tax collections. The decision is a setback only for pharmacy companies which are selling cheap quality drugs by luring the doctors with various gifts and foreign jaunts.” said Consumer Council leader N. Srinivas.
As part of the e-portal system, all the drug manufacturers, stockists, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, licensed chemists and e-pharmacies have to get themselves registered. Once registered, they are expected to enter data related to the drugs they sell including batch numbers, quantity supplied, returned or disposed of, and expiry dates online through web portal or mobile applications.
No retailer, chemist or e-pharmacist would be allowed to sell medicines unless they were registered on this portal, he said.
Indian Medical Association (IMA) district president Mohd. Aleem opined that the implementation of e-portal was a difficult task for the Government. “The chemists need to appoint more data entry operators to enter all the details of medicines sold everyday”, he said and added that the IMA was demanding the Government introduction of single generic medicine and single price.
A retail chemist Charan said that the e-portal system would benefit only the medical shops attached to the hospitals and nursing homes, while the medical shops running in other parts of the town would be denied of business as the patients cannot make purchases across the counter. They would need doctor prescription for any purchase, he said and added that it would lead to several youth losing their jobs.
